STI index stocks ‘Winners and Losers’ this week

We look at STI index stocks to spot winners and losers. If your stock strategy is to buy winners sell losers, looking at price performance this volatile week is good way to spot the truly resilient and truly under-performing.

Because Week 35 2015 is special

This week could be a really good week for stock investors or a horrid one depending on your market timing. Fact is there was really ugly ‘Black Monday‘ when S&P 500, Dow Jones and Nasdaq futures all got halted after hitting circuit breakers. This was followed by a market rebound that deserves an entry into the Guinness World Records. The Dow for instance lost nearly 10% of its top, recovered half of that by market close and then went on to close the week in the black.

Daily chart of Dow Jones Industrial Average showing week 35 2015

Unfortunately investors in the Singapore stock market are not so privileged and so we have to deal with a prominently less exuberant but maybe whole lot more efficient Straits Times Index.

Weekly chart of STI bearish, absent the steep recovery seen in Dow

My interest however is not how the index is doing but how individual stocks performed. This ‘rebounding/crashing’ week is going to help me really separate the over-performers from those that are under.

STI index stocks Week 35 price performance

STI index stocks Week 35 price performance

End of week 18 stocks gained 12 lost. In my opinion not unusual since the STI closed positive for the week as well.

Sentiment checks like this one are very useful. For example, any market participant who followed my quarterly summary of the STI must spot a very significant market signal at the end of June: at the end of Q1 2015 there were 18 winners and 12 losers but by Q2 2015, losing stocks doubled to 24. This was a screaming sign of market weakness.

At pole position for winners, Noble and Olam are up by big margins. This was obviously driven by news that Mitsubishi Corp will acquire 20% of Olam.

As for Noble, speculators were probably hoping for a similar deal. Nothing changed except psychology.

STI index stocks Aug ’15 price performance

Month-to-date (28 August 2015) there are 2 winners (Olam up on news, Noble up on speculation) and 28 losers.

This is very telling in my opinion. Price movement within a week could be a blip but movement over 3 weeks reveal a trend. Question: if Mitsubishi did not announce their acquisition of Olam are we going to have ZERO winners?

I think that if we take Olam and Noble out to eliminate the ‘news effect’, Global Logistics and SIA Engineering are the really strong stocks outperforming STI in a market with very bearish sentiment.

“Dear reader, I do not have a financial license to give advice. I do not know you the reader. Your financial objective and risk tolerance may be different from mine. I am not responsible for any consequence of your action.